Much will be written today and tomorrow about the punishments doled out to Didier Drogba, Jose Bosingwa and Chelsea by UEFA following the second leg semi final tie against Barcelona in May.
For those that haven’t seen it yet, Drogba has been handed a six match ban (with two of those deferred for a probationary period of two years) and Bosingwa has been banned for two matches (with one of those deferred). Chelsea itself has been fined £85,000.
I suspect that journalists, commentators and fans of all clubs will be divided on whether the punishments are too severe or not severe enough. I’ll leave the intricacies of that debate to other blogs until tomorrow, but my initial reaction is that Drogba’s punishment could have been worse, Bosingwa’s is harsh and £85k is a drop in the ocean to Chelsea.
What I would like to raise briefly is a separate but related issue about Chelsea’s typical response to criticism or controversy. Whether you care about it or not, it our club has a poor external reputation - disliked by UEFA and the refereeing fraternity and seemingly lacking in admirers from other impartial football fans.
This poor reputation stems from Abramovich’s wealth, the club’s recent success, accusations of players diving, our behaviour in the transfer market and of course the antics of people like Didier Drogba. But it also comes from the club’s ‘voice’ – our official responses to developments such as which we’ve seen today – which is regularly aggressive and rarely showing sign of humility or remorse. We’ve seen it on the pitch, but off it too a poor reputation is costing the club.
Was today’s UEFA announcement an opportunity for Chelsea to start to rebuild our reputation with that organisation, to start providing reasons for Platini to embrace the club rather than shun it (as reprehensible as he is it would be useful to have him onside) and encourage them to stop including clips of Chelsea players diving as case studies on their referee training videos?
It most certainly was – and the club (or rather the club’s publicity machine) missed a trick. The statement issued on the website within twenty minutes of UEFA’s ruling merely suggested that the club is considering it’s response, nothing more. At the very least, the statement on the Chelsea adds absolutely nothing and was entirely needless. Surely anyway the club knew what to expect and could have planned it’s position ahead of time?
The game is lost, an appeal is unlikely to be successful and the reputational pay-off from an alternative response could pay dividends in the long run. Would it have hurt to have immediately reiterated our acknowledgement of some guilt over the whole affair, accepted the judgement and requested an opportunity to move on from the incident? Drogba could even offer 25% of his weekly salary for each game he misses to charity.
The result of such a response? UEFA don’t have any further ‘Chelsea headache’. The newspapers write entirely different headlines in tomorrow’s papers. Rival fans who criticised Drogba for his actions soften their view and perhaps even consider that those actions were rooted in a dire refereeing performance.
Longer term, improving our reputation could have far further reaching impact, helping us both win refereeing decisions on the pitch and fans off it. One can also imagine it would make us a more attractive club for the world’s top players to play for.
Don’t get me wrong: as a Chelsea fan I don’t actually condemn Drogba, Bosingwa or the fans’ actions that night. In the heat of the moment, a big part of me wanted Drogba to thump Ovrebo. There is a time to fight injustice, but what’s done is done, and now thoughts should turn to how we can make the best of a bad situation.
What do you think? Post a comment.
I would really REALLY hope their reputation has absolutely no bearing on referee's decisions on the pitch.
It'd be nice to see FIFA take into account the ref's inexcusable blunders when doling out penalties to completely legitimate reactions to such heinous calls (and non-calls.)
Posted by: Pete | 17 June 2009 at 21:37
Pete - so would I. But whilst the wider reputation of the club probably doesn't have a direct impact on refereeing decisions, I think it can have an indirect impact in other ways. Thinking about it though, i suppose the recent stories about Chelsea players being pictured diving in anti-cheating films shown by uefa to their referees does throw ovrebo's decisions into new light..
You're right about ovrebo. Referees are never made accountable. Think I'll post on this topic tomorrow
Posted by: Russell Saunders | 17 June 2009 at 22:34
I think the penalty is pretty fair. 2 is maybe a bit much for Bosingwa but fine, whatever.
Personally, I still upset about the whole thing. I know I should get over it, but to me it highlights how bad the referee situation is getting. Nobody seems to be talking about that. Not only for Chelsea but I think the referees have been consistently been getting worse over the last 2-3 years. I have talked about this with other people and generally I find that people agree. If I were Czar, UEFA would apologize for the poor performance of the referees. The game is over, the result etched in stone, but I as a fan of the game would like to see them stand up and say, "there were some missed calls, sorry, we'll try to do better. " And leave it at that.
Maybe I'm crazy.
Posted by: Michael Hepp | 18 June 2009 at 02:20
Michael - I totally agree with you. I don't why it's beyond UEFA to admit that the referee made errors. Don't know if you read UEFA's report of the Chelsea/Barca match on their website - it did not even mention that we had any penalty appeals turned down. It was as though they pretended it didn't happen. This is a disgrace. Having said that, there is a danger that the way we behaved that night (understandably) and the way I think we're going to react to the punishment, is going to distract people's attention from the real issue - bad refereeing.
Posted by: KD | 19 June 2009 at 10:54